5 Special Repositories in Artifactory You Should Know About

By Adi Vizgan

| March 7, 2019

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Among the many different types of binary repositories managed within JFrog Artifactory as an artifact repository, there are 5 very useful repositories that you may have not noticed. Just like all repositories in Artifactory, these also store your binaries with all the added benefits of Artifactory, but serve a bit differently in their usage. Here’s a glimpse into these repositories and how they can enhance your JFrog experience.

1. Generic Repositories

This type of repository has no particular type and can be used to upload packages in any format. Generic repositories do not maintain separate package indexes, because they are not specific to any package type. They are useful when you want to proxy unsupported package types, store installers, navigation files, audio files, etc.

For example, you can create a generic remote repository that proxies and caches Homebrew artifacts. To do this, simply set up a Homebrew repository with the https://homebrew.bintray.com/ URL.

In order to bypass the default Homebrew source repository, add the environment variable HOMEBREW_BOTTLE_DOMAIN with the following command:

This new repository introduced a new set of user/group permissions that define access to the ‘build-info’ files. These are equivalent to managing permissions on repositories with include/exclude patterns on ‘build-info’ JSON paths, in the ‘build-info’ repository. Permissions can be automated using the “Create or Replace Permission Target” REST API call, which now consumes the V2 JSON with a new section for ‘build-info’ permissions.

For example, the following cURL and build-info-permission.json define a new permission target called “java-developers”, for a build called “test-maven”:

Note: When upgrading Artifactory to version 6.6 and above, a migration process will start to move all the ‘build-info’ files from the database to the new ‘artifactory-build-info’ repository. You can control the migration process through the use of a few system properties that can be added to the ‘artifactory.system.properties’ file located in $ARTIFACTORY_HOME/etc.

Additional enhancements include:

Improved accessibility to the ‘build-info’ JSON files and overall performance of the Builds module.

‘build-info’ replication to other instances, since they are stored as artifacts in a repository
(Available using REST API only. Configuring replication for this repository through the UI will be added in future releases).

3. Release Bundles Repository

This immutable release-bundles repository will protect your artifacts as part of the Enterprise+ distribution flow. Artifacts that have been created and signed are automatically copied and saved into this separate repository where their contents can not be edited or removed. This ensures consistency of distribution among target instances. Even if the original artifacts are removed from the original repository, they will continue to stay in the release bundle repository, available for distribution. These release bundles are created and managed in JFrog Distribution, and generally distributed from a source Artifactory instance to Artifactory Edge nodes.

* Available for Enterprise+ when upgrading to both Artifactory 6.5 and Distribution 1.3.

4. Distribution Repository

The distribution repository provides a quick and easy way to distribute artifacts/builds from Artifactory to Bintray for distribution to customers and end users. Like the Generic repository, it can manage any package format. Using a set of rules, you can define how files will automatically be distributed to Bintray.

For example, the below shows the distribution of an artifact from Artifactory to Bintray:

Another example, distributing a build from the Artifactory UI to Bintray:

5. Support Bundles Repository

This recently introduced in Artifactory version 6.8, support-bundles-repository contains all system log files created when generating a Support Bundle, used for analysis and debugging of customer issues by JFrog Support. When creating a new Support Bundle via the UI or REST API, the Support Bundle will automatically be saved in the support-bundles-repository. They are then easily available to be downloaded via the UI or REST API (List Support Bundles, Get Support Bundle and Delete Support Bundle).

Now that you know about these 5 repositories, get going and try them out!